Welcome to the Facebook Cougar Club Members!

Cougar Community Classic Cougar Community Discussion
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Welcome to the Classic Cougar Community Forums!

The Cougar Club group on Facebook has recently been inundated with posts from people interested in the “other” kind of Cougar. I have invited members from that group to join us here.

Welcome Facebook Cougar Club members!
Let me answer a few questions you might have, right off the bat:

Is this thing moderated to keep the undesirable content out?

YES! The forum is run by Mercury Cougar enthusiasts and exists solely for the purpose of making the hobby more fun.

Why is this better than a Facebook group?

This is a multi part answer:

Anything that you can do on Facebook, you can do here, and so much more.

There are lots of things here that you can’t find on Facebook,
We keep the riff raff out, NO ADVERTISING!
Tons of “how to” videos
Great tech tips and “how to” write ups, you can even get free parts if you do a write up yourself!
The Cougar Ride of the Month poll.
Have a rare Cougar or want to know more about them? The GT-E, XR7-G, Eliminator, 428 Cobra Jet and 429 Cobra Jet Registries are here.
The Dream Cougar Window Sticker generator where you can spec out a new 1968 Cougar and see exactly what they window sticker would look like FREE!
Free classified ads (includes FREE STUFF!) and even our very own Ebay style auction site for Cougar parts only; CougarSwapMeet.Com
And every thing here is searchable. So every day the accumulated knowledge of The Cougar Community grows ans grows.

What does it cost?

$0, zip, nada. It is free. You can donate to help offset the costs but itis absolutely not required. Your most important contribution will always be your participation in the site.

Will you use my email address to send me spam?

NO! This forum was started to provide Cougar enthusiasts with a spam free experience.

Who runs this joint?

The site is run by Bill Basore with a huge amount of help from Jay S. I am a certifiably Cougar crazy enthusiast with at least half a dozen Cougars in the garage at any time. The CCC Forms celebrate their 3rd birthday on December 23rd 2013. If you have any questions, feel free to email me at billb @ classiccougarcommunity . com (remove the spaces, got to keep the email bots from spamming me to death). or you can call me at 480…239…5537.

What do you have to do to participate?

In order to post, you have to register. All that takes is a working email address, and you will have to answer a question about Cougars so we will know that you are human and can read English (What kind of engine came in every Cougar from 1967 to 1973? Answer = V8) This keeps the robots and Russian spammers from signing up.

Where do I go to register?

https://classiccougarcommunity.com/forum/ucp.php?mode=register

What are the members like?

The BEST! First off, we love Mercury Cougars! There are members from all over the world, and more Cougar specific experience than you will find anywhere else on the internet. If you looking for the RIGHT answer to your question, this is the place.

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Nice action Bill, i too was getting a bit tired of all the spam getting on the facebook Groups.

But i do need to do a tiny little correction of Your post :wink:

Who runs this joint ?
Well Bill, you and Jay provides the Space and all that, but those who runs it: Is you Bill, Jay and all the other members that posts and partisipates to keep the questions and answers flying around here, along With lots of facts and some fiction now n then, and all the other fun stuff you will find on and trough this great forum :slight_smile:

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Very good, Bill!!

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Jan-O is correct of course. We just keep the electrons pointed in the right direction, the members do the important stuff. LOL!

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Last count there are nine (9) facebook Cougar groups. Looks like people can’t just join one group but have to rush off and create another one

Very little technical stuff on facebook pages

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Leon, you have been at this longer than most all of us. You have been a part of pretty much everything since before there was much of anything to be a part of. How can we go from becoming more splintered and into a more unified group of hobbyists?

Oh, and Leon was about 6 when started driving Cougars…

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I do not have a Facebook account nor do I intend to ever create one. I do check this site at least twice a day.

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In the olden days there was a closer bond between those of us on the Yahoo board and the Thursday night chat session. Interacting, even on a weekly basis, was a great way to build community. A lot of us got together like you do with Barrett Jackson, which went a long way to building community

I once thought that bringing CCOA into the modern era, with them taking over TCCN and MCN, would have created a unified approach, but personalities and vested interests killed that (although there has been some progress lately)

Buying MCN and combining it with CCC would be a start, but would still lack the social instant communication of Facebook. The Facebook sites tend to be dominated by “look at me I own a Cougar”. They appear to promote individualism and opinion, although I have noticed that some of the newer sites are being frequented by some of the old regulars with long time experience.

All the sites lack a definitive wiki style source of technical and modification information that can be relied on. If that existed then the Facebook sites would refer technical queries to the wiki.

I think the horse has bolted and there is little chance of creating a single community site that addresses everyone’s preferences. We just have to wait until some of the Facebook sites die because of disinterest or because there is a better alternative that offers the same ease of joining and use but is backed up by credible information.

…and then there is the issue of people being peed off because personalities start to dominate a site or those looking after the site become disinterested in Cougars

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Part of the Cougar mystique is that it isn’t mainstream. Generalizing here, but it seems to me that Cougar owners tend to go against the flow and relish their individuality. If we wanted to be like everyone else, we’d be driving a Mustang or Camaro. In other words, I don’t think there can be a one-size-fits-all group. Some like the threaded message board format found here and mc.net, others the listserv format of Yahoo, others the printed newsletter of the CCOA, others … the Curb, Cougar garage, personal websites, ham radio, local clubs with in-person meetings, Facebook (Gavin will chastise me if I don’t insert a plug for the CCOA on Facebook here)…

Leon has a point about personalities too. We saw it on mc.net more than once, came close here too. The whole East Coast-West Coast division apparently affected the CCOA years ago, or so it seemed when I first got involved. I’ll never understand why TCCN would allow its collected knowledge to disappear rather than offering it to a new sponsor. So it goes.

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Very good points, and that is why I asked. I look at this site, in part, as if it were a product. I keep looking for ways to make the product better, which in an honest description, means more appealing to potential “customers”.

Looking at Facebook, the Cougar Club group, was and still is, being inundated with spam postings for Cougar dating sites. This spurred at least two members of that group to create new Cougar groups. One group sort of backed down and the new group is the Mercury Cougar Club. I posted several appeals there to suggest that we had a better product here, and the total number of people that signed up here appears to be two. The new Facebook page 85. This is pretty compelling. And discouraging, but so it is. So the question on my mind is what can we do here that would make this more appealing, as an 85 to 2 ratio is pretty strong evidence that what we offer now is not what these folks want.

The first step has to be understanding exactly what Facebook is doing better. The second step is determining if it is even possible to emulate or compete with what they are doing.

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There is another way to look at this and that is that Facebook is serving one audience (call it the casual enthusiast audience) and this site serves another (call it the serious enthusiast audience). They are two different experiences. The posts here are generally more about starting a discussion, often but not always technical. Facebook is more stream of consciousness in nature with everyone else acknowledging (liking) what someone else posted or just taking it in.

They are two different experiences and maybe shouldn’t try to compete with each other. Many of the folks here aren’t interested in an almost purely social form of experiencing the Cougar hobby. We like and want the discussions, the knowledge exchange, and the reference material this site generates.

I am actually only on Facebook for one reason only - to stay connected to people in the Cougar world who aren’t all on this forum. I almost never post anything and rarely respond to posts, although I’ll admit the political posts sometimes pull me in for a single response. I spend much more time and thought here.

So I wouldn’t want to see this site become more like Facebook and I don’t need Facebook to become more like this site since we already have that, thanks to you. Also, the 85:2 ratio might be deceiving - how many of the 85 are already members here? People will always sample something new; lets see what the numbers look like six months from now.

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I agree with Bill P. I am a (reluctant) FB user and for the greatest part find it, well, annoying. I see no real comparison between the two mediums and a forum is really my only interest. Even the Yahoo listserv thing annoys me!

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As often happens I agree with Bill as well. Maybe what we have here is what we all want. This site is about getting questions answered, following the projects of others, etc. Facebook seems to be about stroking your own ego by collecting friends and likes. Maybe we’re better off if that crowd stays where they are.

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The one thing that facebook has that this site does not have is name recognition. Just about everyone has heard of them. Unless a person is into Cougars (the ones made by Mercury), they most likely have never heard of this site. Or the other one. Or the CCOA. Or any of the many local Cougar clubs. I do not have a facebook account and have only ever seen a page or two when someone has sent me a link. I agree with what others have posted, the product that facebook offers and what a forum like this offers are two very different things.

As for trying to bring all Cougar enthusiasts together under one group, good luck. That is something that I and the rest of the leadership of the CCOA have been trying to do for years. There are just too many different ways of thinking when it comes to how a group should be run, and too many of the groups out there have been doing things their way for too many years to consider anything that even sounds like change. However if you do come up with an idea of how to do this I will be all ears.

Randy Goodling
CCOA #95

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All good points. I find myself agreeing with both Bills, Randy, and even ECI Bob…FB, while “fun” at first, is more of an annoyance any more. Here, and at the other Cougar(car type) sites, you can go for information. FB…well, like Al said…collecting friends and likes seems to be what it’s about. I do find it useful for keeping up with family across the country, however.

How many Mustang sites are there? TONS. Cougar, not so many. I would imagine some of those 'stang sites spun off as a by-products of prior/existing sites, as well. In other words, I see it as a non-issue, because, you can’t please all the people, all of the time. They will gravitate to where they feel most comfortable.

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Al, you’re absolutely right on!! I wouldn’t want this forum to become like FB, even though I’m a member of FB and use it for connecting with friends/family. FB is totally useless to discuss ideas and advice. Just keep this site as it is; we love it. (My 2 cents worth).

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And also maybe the facebook Groups gets more of the crowd that is not total enthusiasts just yet, they just have a cat in the driveway, or in a garage.

Then joins up on a fb group because they perhaps started to get curious, they get some the posts from the cougar Groups on their fb page mixed in with all the other info they receive from friends and other groups things there, then maybe after some time the bug starts to bite harder, then they move over to the forum part of the community.

But on the other hand did you check if not some of the New ones that joined up on the fb groups, are not already on the forum here under a screen name ?
And the forums will always be a little shifting, you have the hardcore people that is steady, then you have those that joins out of curiosity, stays on a little while, then fades away.
Then there is those that come With the parade and the marchingbands, then the baloon get popped and they are gone.

And also the lurkers, the People that have the interest, but wants to be anonymous, they collect their needed info and quietly retracts to the garage to work on their cats.

The Activity on the forums are performed mainly from the hardcore cougar people, the serious enthusiasts, and the members with medium interest.

It might be easier to be a “follower” on the cougar community on fb, as they then receive the info posted on the groups to their info page on fb.
But i think that the hadcore and enthusiasts that you find on fb groups, are very much those that you find here on the forums too.

And if we keep on posting info on the fb groups about CCCF from time to time, then we may start to get some New member where the interest has started growing

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I agree that this site should be kept as is. I don’t have a Facebook account and probably never will. The main reason is the Fire Department I work for has a strong no use policy and it is blocked on our server due to misuse. My wife and kids use Facebook to keep in touch with family and friends. The forum type sites like the Classic Cougar Community I think work best from what I’ve seen. If Facebook users move over I’m sure they will enjoy this format even if it’s just for a short time. Heck some might stay and become long time user/members.
Steven

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Merry Christmas everybody! While dinner is cooking…

I am hearing all of you loud and clear that we don’t want to mess up what we have here and I completely agree!

Here is what is going through my head… I see cars and people on the Facebook pages that really need to be on here. There are some serious Cougar folks out there that have a lot to share with us, and we have a lot that we can share with them.

“The answer is in the room” As usual, you guys have some great observations and very good points.

Here is what I am getting from the conversation, and let me thank each of you for your thoughtful input here. Great stuff!:

I think that we can learn a lot from drug dealers. They have a business model that works so well they don’t even have to be good at it to be successful.

If I am hearing you guys correctly then maybe Facebook is the gateway drug to developing a Cougar addiction. Turn those casual users into real addicts… LOL!

Perhaps if we created a Classic Cougar Community Facebook page, and then posted links to the threads here, we could be true to what we are doing now, and provide an introduction to the hard stuff to the FB folks.

While we are at it, is there something else that we should be doing to make what we have here better?

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I find that most Facebook pages relating to cars are clearing houses for misinformation.
Yes there are people with a lot of enthusiasm for our cars which IMHO is offset by a ton of blow hards that chime in with comments such as “my dad went to buy one of those,brand new but it had rust holes on the fender so he bought a Volvo instead” or the My Uncle bought a 68 Cougar with a 427 SOHC from the factory…etc. etc.
I think one could make a full time job trying to correct and or educate such people, but at my age it trips a 1,000 amp circuit breaker in my head and I mentally check out. JMHO

Merry Christmas to you Bill!